One of the most fantastic things about the internet is the way it hooks us up with information and people. Want to know how to build your rain barrel? Instructables has several different articles. Trying to figure out something in Burnout: Paradise City? Watch one of the almost 3,000 videos on YouTube.

Or you can use it to connect a lot of people who want to teach others in person. That’s what the people behing Learnapalooza are doing. There’s currently over thirty sessions scheduled to happen on May 10th which will cover everything from geeky stuff like writing a Facebook application to more granola things like how and why to eat local food. If you wish you weren’t writing facebook apps you can learn some hip-hop dance or more general skills for dancing at a party. The schedule lists 31 events at the moment, all in donated locations.

I agree with their central idea - everyone has something to teach others - and think this is just a great idea. Get out and learn something!

Warning. This video contains some coarse language.

But they’re right, this is total bullshit. A bunch of Libertarians got together, with their iPods, and headed over to the Jefferson Memorial to have a silent dance party for Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, as it was his birthday this weekend. One of the dancers was then arrested by the Park Police for dancing in the monument amongst a bunch of other dancers around midnight, as not to disturb tourists.

I’m still not clear on what she was arrested for, or exactly what the whole deal was with the Police who decided she needed to get hauled off because she wanted to get her groove on with Thomas Jefferson. You can read a personal account of the event, or another personal response about the event, and as Mike Licht points out, Jefferson himself said “Dancing is a healthy and elegant exercise, a specific against social awkwardness…”

But apparently, it will get you a bullshit arrest by a bunch of rentacops gone rogue. I understand that The Jefferson 1 was released, but I am not sure if charges are pending or not.

So much for Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness…

Oral Copulation Sassy Cat
seen at Harris Teeter

“Here you go, snookums. I got you an electric, dancing, noisemaker cat for Valentine’s Day and it appears to be ready for oral copulation. That’s a gift for everyone!”

If I brought this home, I would expect my lovely wife to feel insulted, as if that was all she was worth. I think I would do better to forget the whole holiday. At least then I wouldn’t have to explain why I gave her such a turd of a gift.

Whatever you do, don’t get this for your sweetheart. Guys, I am trying to help you out here. It dances, sings a song and annoys the hell out of the grocery clerks. At least it does when I walk by and press all the buttons like a three-year-old. If you need a stuffed animal for that special someone, go for the little bear to the right of the cat. The bear is trying to get some love, as opposed to the cat, who looks more like she is trying to give it up.

What do you think is the perfect romantic gift?

image courtesy of lewisfrancis

Nobody could blame you if you weren’t aware of Anonymous’ War on Scientology. While interesting, it’s a little obscure, which sadly somewhat interferes with their mission.

The short version: The Church of Scientology has a long history of wielding lawsuits against former members and critical outsiders, usually copyright and trade secret claims. Whether it’s reasonable for a religion to have trade secrets is a subject of a lot of discussion. Places like XENU.net, the home of Operation Clambake, have a lot of backstory on the CoS’s beliefs and behaviors and goes a long way towards explaining why some people have a problem with the CoS.

When the CoS exerted a lot of effort recently to suppress a video of famous Scientologist Tom Cruise being, well… odd, even for Tom Cruise, it apparently kicked off an internet phenomenon. Anonymous declared war on the CoS, which up until Saturday was primarily online shenanigans of the hacker variety. There’s a collection of information trying to make sense of it over here.

Saturday was the first live event revolving around this phenomenon, with hundreds of people showing up at Scientology centers all over the world. There’s a collection of videos and citations of them over here, which included the following one at the CoS center off Dupont Circle. Don’t bother looking for coverage of it in WaPo.

If you’re wondering “why would anyone play that horrific song,” well, it’s because apparently the kind of people interested in Anonymous’ war on Scientology also think the Rickroll meme is funny. Which it kinda is, in the same way as the old joke “how do you keep a moron in suspense?” is funny. However since the whole point is to get someone to subject themselves to it by telling them it’s something else, it doesn’t make a lot of sense in this context. Here it just makes passers-by wonder “if their taste in music is that bad then maybe Scientology is okay.”

On the other hand, I think more protests should involve dancing, even if it’s to crap 80s songs.

photo courtesy of atp_tyreseus

If you can’t think of anything more fun than lurching around the District, covered in bits of gray matter and blood, menacing tourists, then, well, [Representative Ron Paul joke redacted] the upcoming zombie lurch is for you.

Pour on the red paint, tear up your clothing, re-enact the zombie dance from Thriller, then walk shamble around the city. Yep, dance.

First, to kick off the event, we invite folks to “Thrill The World!” Starting at 6:00PM sharp, people around the planet will be dancing the same routine to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people to do the same dance, simultaneously & world-wide!

Sadly, my darling girlfriend won’t have the opportunity to veto our attending this event - we’ve got an art show in Dupont at Church of the Pilgrim that day. If you’re free and pride-impaired, put on your best food coloring & corn syrup and go for a walk stumble. If it’s 1/10th the fun of Santarchy it’ll be a good time.

Among the many people I chatted with about their upcoming Fringe shows last night at the kickoff party was Brianna, here on the right with another dancer (whose name I did not get) from their show 69 Ways To Fall In Love that will appear at the Warehouse Next Door’s mainstage. Behind them is Basso Moderno Duo, otherwise known as Allan von Schenkel and Kristen Williams.

I started to type that Brianna and her dance partner were performing with accompaniment from Basso Moderno, but it’s possible that von Schenkel and Williams would say they were making music with some dance accompaniment. Brianna identified the show to me as a play with some dancing, which she stood by when I asked “Not dancing with some play?” The Fringe program describes the show thusly: “Be embraced by musical sound-scapes and lighting as they create a lush atmosphere for dance and acting. ”

Warehouse - Mainstage
1021 7th Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Sun 7/22 @ 2:30p, Tue 7/24 @ 12:15p, Wed 7/25 @ 7p, Sun 7/29 @ Noon.

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Continuing the musical Mt Pleasant theme, we now have a second band playing tonight.

Over at Rebecca’s its Boxy and the Movers kicking up old school rock and roll.

Too bad that Don isn’t here because dancing is about to start and he really cuts the rug. Now I have to bust a move and with my white boy shuffle complete with overbite, its gonna get messy.

It’s pretty obvious that kd lang likes what she does. She walked out onto the stage with a bounce in her step and a grin on her face that I might be able to replicate if - and my apologies to my darling girlfriend on this one - you told me I’d won the lottery and never had to work again, and hey, by the way, Drew Barrymore is waiting outside in a limo to take you off for a long weekend in Bermuda and ****REDACTED****.

Sorry.

Anyway, lang clearly is tickled pink by what she does and it comes through in her performance. She sung a little over a half-dozen songs and interspersed them with some brief patter and a fair amount of playful dancing. That’s not to say she doesn’t move well, but there was a definite sense of whimsy in it.

In five years of seeing Lyle Lovett’s annual show at Wolf Trap this is the first time he’s had an opening act, but I’d say she was a good lead in. My only disappointment is that they didn’t do a song together.

That grin, by the way? Just as big and as firmly in place when she walked off at the end as when she came on. We all should be so thrilled by what we do.

No, not in the sense of, say, Metro being on time and stuff. No, I speak of the MetroPerforms! events happening at differing metro stations around town. All the currently scheduled performances are in the District and run through September.

Today kicks off the series at 4:30pm at Dupont Station entrance at Q street with some hand dancing which will continue through to 6:30pm. If you’ve never heard of it, well, that’s two of us. Here’s some video of what is apparently a DC-area unique form of swing dancing.

Auditions are about to begin if you or someone you know would like to be a performer in PG or Montgomery county.

The auditions in Prince George’s County will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, June 16, at the Mt. Rainier Artists Loft community room, 3311 Rhode Island Ave., Mt. Rainier, MD. Interested individuals should send an email to vrussell@artspg.org to schedule an audition time.

Montgomery County will hold auditions from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, June 29, at Silver Plaza on Ellsworth Drive in downtown Silver Spring. The auditions will be open to the public and performers will have three minutes on stage to impress a panel of judges.

More information at the MetroPerforms! press release. Performances at stations in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties will likely begin in July.

More performance art than concert film, Stop Making Sense is something any Talking Heads fan should seek out. And if you made it to Silver Spring last night, the AFI was gracious enough to provide a free outdoor screening on a closed off Ellsworth Drive as part of their SilverDocs documentary film festival (in collaboration with the Discovery Channel). The location is across the street from the MLK fountain and midway between the Discovery Channel headquarters and the site that hosts the annual Silver Spring Jazz Festival.

The film was conceived and directed by Jonathan Demme in 1984, after seeing the Heads perform live at the Greek in LA.

The cinematic nature of their show inspired him to approach David Byrne and pitch his idea.

I forgot just how good the film and performance are after a 20 year hiatus. The street was packed with aging new wavers dancing and clapping and smiling with obvious enjoyment. Younger folks and kids also joined in. One man I met, an older blues musician who wasn’t familiar with the band and the film, seemed really intrigued when I explained some of the history of the group and the movie.

I saw the original the same year it was released in 1985, at the Downer Theatre in Milwaukee. It was the first concert film to use digital audio, and they did not hold back on the volume. Around the same time I was lucky enough to run into Jerry Harrison, a Milwaukee native. I had a nice chat with him over a few beers at the famous Hooligan’s Super Bar in the same neighborhood. After the Heads broke up, Jerry went on to produce records for such bands as the Violent Femmes (also from Milwaukee, the trio used to play on the street and were “discovered” by the Pretenders before a show they were invited to open for at the historic Oriental Theatre), along with the Foo Fighters, Crash Test Dummies, The Verve Pipe, No Doubt, and many others.

Follow-up releases of the film on DVD (and other formats no one uses anymore) include songs that were edited out of the original due to time constraints.

Fans of bassist Tina Weymouth should remember her spin-off band, the Tom Tom Club, which was a collaboration with her husband and Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz. They performed one song in the film, Genius of Love.

I almost forgot to mention the big suit, drop me in the water…